Monday, February 9, 2009

I'm sure everyone has been wondering why I haven't posted in awhile. It's simple. We crossed over 500,000 hits, which meant it was time for me to step aside and let Keller provide you with way too many obscure links that probably none of you will click on. As it turns out, Keller encompasses the Club Trillion ideal of doing the bare minimum much more than I could ever dream of doing. This time around he was only about a week late, and only finished because I was constantly nagging him. He felt like it was necessary to voice his opinion on the "Whitest on the Team Election" coming up. It wasn't necessary at all, but since I'm a good guy, I figured I'd let him amuse himself. I'll probably post my next entry (which coincidentally will be my campaign post) tomorrow at some point, provided Keller's lack of motivation isn't contagious. I promise to give my update on the post-game handshakes in that post as well. Until then, please try (I know it's hard, but just try) to enjoy the handful of links and insider jokes that Keller decided to barf all over this blog.

___________________________________________________

I'd like to apologize to the 4 people who look forward to my posts on Club Trillion - I spent the majority of last week with no computer access after my laptop decided it would be a great time for Windows to stop working. 500,000 views arrived and I was still checking Club Trillion on my PS3 browser. We're all good to go now, so here's my post:

As we sit a mere three weeks away from what Mark is calling the most important day of the year (more important than National Chipotle Day? I think not, but it's his blog so I'll let him go with it), the time is coming where Mark and Kyle will be making their final pleas for your "Whitest Guy on the Team" vote. As Mark's best (and more than likely, only) friend, I have the distinct ability to corroborate his claims, as well as call BS on others. It's going to be Mark's responsibility to establish his whiteness, and he will be doing so in future posts, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time backing up those statements. Though he does have a pretty solid base. For example, Mark and I have had a serious and heated conversation over who has a better overall "Greatest Hits" album - Diamond Rio or Lonestar. Mark took the side of Lonestar while I took the side of Diamond Rio. He obviously failed to remember the greatness of "That's How Your Love Makes Me Feel Inside." If an argument like that doesn't show whiteness, I don't know what does.

You'll be hearing a lot of these things from Mark in the coming weeks - his fear of dancing, the fact he owns an acoustic guitar, the striking similarities between himself and Randy Marsh - but it's my civic duty to inform you of the things I've learned over the years that might tarnish Mark's campaign. While there are countless things in my eyes that strike me as not "white," I've decided to limit it to a top five of sorts. In no specific order, this is what I came up with:

He never watched TRL

As mind-boggling as it is, it’s absolutely true. The fact that Mark never learned proper sideburn growth from Carson Daly is not only a serious blow to his whiteness, but it also means that apparently Mark was never in junior high. Seriously, how can someone who claims he connects so well with his fellow whites not be able to tell the significance of a video’s 65th day on TRL (hint Mark: it gets retired) or know that Damien Fahey absolutely sucked as a host?

So much of my formative whiteness came from begrudgingly learning the words to “I Want It That Way” after seeing it 65 straight weekdays, hoping 3LW seriously didn’t make the Top Ten, and pitying the people who stood outside the Times Square studio in hopes that Carson and the cameras would turn to the windows and show the people who weren’t cool enough to get into the studio. Mark never watched the 65 days of awkwardness of Carson Daly introducing “The Real Slim Shady,” which made direct references to him and Christina Aguilera doing things of an inappropriate nature, and he will never be able to tell his kids that he was watching the glorious day in 8th grade when Brownsburg High School ballers Scott Garrard and Jared Reeves (the original Mark Tituses) were not only in the crowd of TRL, but actually were interviewed by Carson Daly. It’s sad. And not white.

He hated WCW

It should have been obvious that I wasn't going to make a list without making a relevant reference to professional wrestling. And I'm not even going to make the obvious reference to John Cena's hip-hop appeal. As much of a fan as he claims to be of wrestling, it is of my opinion that he never really liked WCW. This isn't to say that he didn't like certain things about WCW - I don't know of a single person who doesn't like the nWo, Ric Flair, or Diamond Cutters - but Mark never really liked the classic WCW of the late 80s/early 90s. I'm talking the Sting/Rude Clash of the Champions '91 type WCW, the Great Muta/Lex Luger Starrcade '89 type WCW, the War Games '89 type WCW. When asked who Tully Blanchard is, he would probably answer "construction worker" and not "member of the greatest stable of all time, the Four Horsemen." The fact that Mark didn't like the NWA/WCW of that time is quite disappointing in terms of his "white trash" cred, because the roots of the promotion at that time represented the down south, white trash roots to an almost painful level. Seriously, our buddy Dale Thornton would be disappointed with you, Mark.

He knows rap music - lots of it

I met Mark for the first time in 6th grade. When I walked into Ms. Baggarly’s class, staring me in the face was a 6 foot tall kid sitting in a high school desk amongst all the normal-sized (for 12 year olds) desks. We didn’t talk much (I spent most of my time having an awesome mop of bleached blonde hair) until our class trip to Bradford Woods. Before that point, the only things I knew about Mark were that he was in our smart class because he was actually 15 and taking the material for the third time (later found out to be untrue) and that he shaved his mustache every day (this part was true), but sitting in the back of the bus, we struck up a conversation over the important things in life – our mutual crush on Megan Miller, the awesomeness of Reggie Miller, and the music of the now defunct Indianapolis radio station RadioNow 93.1. Since my musical knowledge to that point in my life consisted entirely of Weird Al and “Don’t Take The Girl” I was sufficiently confused when Mark semi-melodically posed a series of questions to me - “Wanna be a baller? Shot caller? 20 inch blades on the Impala?” With those words of Lil’ Troy, I was introduced to Mark Titus, rap music fan.

While he is indeed a very large country music fan, he is also a more than he would like to admit fan of rap music. If he doesn’t own every 2pac album, it’s only because he doesn’t consider “Loyal To The Game” to be a true work of Tupac Shakur. He blared Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” before every high school football game, which I’m not sure whether that’s an indictment of his whiteness or a commentary on the fact that he played high school football in 2004-2005.

I could go on and on with similar anecdotes. Mark has asked me to download multiple Jagged Edge songs for him, he can recite the words to R&B songs that aren’t “The Thong Song”, he will vigorously defend the importance of Loon in “I Need A Girl”…you get the idea. While he’s not alone in his love of these songs as a white man – I personally find Next’s “Too Close” to be the best song about getting an erection on the dance floor, for example– it is not a quality that enhances his whiteness.

He gave himself a nickname

I can say with absolute certainty that nobody before the invention of this blog has ever called Mark “The Shark.” Mark tried making the nickname stick a couple times in high school with absolutely no luck. It is incredibly comical to me now to see people address emails with “Dear Mark The Shark” or even “Hey Shark” when no person Mark has known in his life had ever referred to him as such, pre-November 2008. If there’s one thing white people don’t do, it’s give ourselves nicknames. Nicknames are given to you by others, whether it’s from your aging boxing trainer, your high school football teammates in North Carolina (edit: Virginia), or Vince McMahon. The assigning of your own nickname is something limited to rappers and Brazilian soccer players. Of course we all think up nicknames for ourselves (my own would either be the Hoosier Bruiser or the Red Scare - depending on my wrestling character, obviously) but to take the next step and pass it off as given to us by another person is not right, and it’s not white.

He looks like K-Fed

I’ve tried to reconcile with this thought. I’ve tried to talk myself out of the resemblance. I’ve tried to convince myself he’s really just prepping himself for some new MMA love story movie that has just been greenlit. But I can’t. I’ve finally resigned myself to the fact that for a good period of time, the buzzcut/stubblebeard combo that Mark rocked made him look like Kevin Federline. Is this such an awful thing? It’s debatable. Federline managed to be awesome enough that the mere notion of separation made his wife go just a little bit crazy. Something must be working for the guy. But his whiteness? Not so much. The tale of the tape shows Federline to be a hip hop dancer and rapper, two things completely devoid of the whiteness Mark is trying to convince you he possesses. I guess Mark might be able to claim he only sported the look in the hopes of getting an FU (now renamed to The Throwback, apparently) from John Cena, but with something as important as the distinction of Whitest Player on the Team at stake, do you really want to risk your vote on someone who might unleash Popozao at any moment? Think long and hard, America.

--------------------------------

On to a little bit of serious business. Every day we get somewhere in the range of 5-10 people emailing Mark and asking us to check out and/or plug their blog, website, business, etc. While we do tend to look at most of the ones we get sent, we can’t give any kind of promotion to your site. It’s nothing personal, we just can’t monitor or control the content of your site, so we can’t put it up. The only way to get your name mentioned in the blog is to send in a basketball YouTube and have Mark use it, or send in a sweet picture of yourself as a member of the Trillion Man March and have it put on the site. Other than that, I can’t think of a way. If you have a YouTube or a Trillion Man March pic, pass it along to us at ClubTrillion@gmail.com.

--------------------------------

Finally, to the most serious business of my post. We are a short 5 days away from Valentine’s Day and as fate would have it Mark currently does not have a Valentine. Simply put, this is unacceptable. It is so unacceptable that I will pay for a nice steak dinner for Mark and any girl who changes his Valentine’s Day fate. If you are an attractive female that likes Longhorn Steakhouse, and you like Mark Titus, and you’ll be in the Columbus area ~2 days before and/or after February 14th, consider submitting yourself or someone you know that fits the criteria (pic included) to ClubTrillion@gmail.com.

The reason the dinner will need to take place at Longhorn is simple. When we graduated from high school, instead of having his parents give me money at my open house, Mark insisted that his parents give me a gift card to Longhorn so I could ask the girl I took to prom out on a date. I was slow playing the situation and had it completely under control until Mark decided to intervene. He not only gave me the gift card and constantly annoyed me to ask her out, he actually told her that he bought me a gift card and that I was going to ask her out in the coming days. Yet another reason for me to question my friendship with Mark. Needless to say, I didn’t end up using it that summer, and when I brought it to Arizona I found out there were no Longhorns west of Missouri. It’s been gathering dust ever since, so I feel it’s only right for Mark to make use of it.

We have already had one potential Valentine submitted. Her sister actually emailed us the other day submitting her as a potential suitor for Mark, and she passed the initial Andy Keller approval test when her sister said that she used to dish out Diamond Cutters to her younger brother. Congratulations, Julie Guiler. You are currently the best candidate to be Mark's Valentine.

If you think you know someone who (or you) can top Julie and her Diamond Cutters, then don’t hesitate to submit them/yourself to ClubTrillion@gmail.com. I’ll let you guys know what comes of this, or if Mark nixes the whole thing because he is the fun police. Until then, I’ll leave you with a ridiculously “Perfect” wrestling YouTube.

Club Trillion Shirts

Club Trillion has partnered with HOMAGE to bring you what are guaranteed to be the softest shirts you'll own. A portion of the t-shirt sales will benefit A Kid Again, an Ohio charity aimed at improving the quality of life for children with life-threatening illnesses. Get a Club Trillion shirt, help a great cause, and instantly become the life of the party. Ready, go.